Antony Loewenstein

My following article appears in today’s ABC The Drum:

The Wikileaks-released Guantanamo Bay files provide an invaluable insight into the mindset of the US and its allies since September 11.

An infrastructure of torture was implemented, a practice still defended by the US government today, to allegedly protect the homeland from future attack.

The result was hundreds of innocent men kidnapped and incarcerated without trial – a “legal and moral disaster”, according to The New York Times – and President Obama continues shielding torturers in the previous and current administrations. He has pledged to Look Forward and Not Back. The current President has merely extended the Bush administration’s indefinite detention regime for so-called terror suspects.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald unleashed necessary fury about this reality:

The idea of trusting the government to imprison people for life based on secret, untested evidence never reviewed by a court should repel any decent or minimally rational person, but these newly released files demonstrate how warped is this indefinite detention policy specifically.

Yet this authoritarian impulse to believe untested claims by the US government is exactly what many in the media have been doing for years, repeating without question deliberately leaked intelligence files on the “worst of the worst” prisoners.

One local example is The Australian columnist Chris Kenny, failed Liberal politician and former chief of staff to former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. During a Twitter conversation on Wednesday with Paul Barrett, a former Secretary of Australian Departments of Defence and Primary Industries & Energy, Kenny wrote, “You’re arguing to set free people who have murdered thousands” when Barrett asked why the US refused to conduct fair and open trials for individuals who had never faced justice.

In Kenny’s worldview, the American military has smeared hundreds of Muslims as terrorists and that’s good enough for him. The fact that the Wikileaks file shows the vast majority of Guantanamo Bay detainees had no connection to September 11 or terrorism can be ignored.

This has been the default position of the vast bulk of the corporate press since 9/11. In Australia, especially the Murdoch press has smeared former Guantanamo Bay inmates David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib. This continued with Downer who called both men “terrible, terrible people”, perhaps because he fears what an independent investigation may find in regards to his own government’s alleged complicity in their long incarceration.

Australian journalist Sally Neighbour published an analysis a few days ago that inadvertently undermined her own paper’s years of misleading reporting:

The dossiers on Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks reveal the so-called evidence used to justify their incarceration to be a confused mishmash replete with glaring factual errors and inconsistencies, principally based on self-incrimination that would not be admitted in a proper court of law and tainted by the inclusion of information obtained under torture.

What Neighbour conveniently omitted from her report were the journalists and editors who have dined for years on rehashing US government released propaganda against Hicks and Habib, including The Australian, and smearing them constantly. Clearly media accountability was not on the agenda for a decade of establishment stenography. Today’s Australian editorial begrudgingly acknowledges the torture suffered by Habib and Hicks but issues no apology for spending years accusing them both of terrorism.

Thankfully this week’s Sydney Morning Herald editorially called the treatment of Hicks and Habib by its rightful name, torture.

It took one of the world’s more diligent and un-embedded journalists on Guantanamo Bay inmates, Andy Worthington, to unpack the Wikileaks revelations and highlight the decade of ignoring legal precedent for the Cuban and American black hole down which countless men were tortured and housed.

Reading Worthington’s copious work over the years makes a reader wonder why more mainstream reporters didn’t investigate the prison camp with a very critical eye. Is it because, as a former Bush official said, too many US journalists wanted to be seen as “patriotic” and protect America’s “interests”. Truth came a distant third. Guantanamo Bay was a place where psychological experiments and torture was common-place.

But what of the latest Wikileaks revelations themselves which, for the record, should be seen as merely US official opinion rather than actual factual reporting? We learn that the US allowed a number of repressive country’s intelligence services access to Guantanamo Bay detainees, including officials from China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

This highly prejudicial process was also committed by Australia during the Howard government when it emerged in 2005 that Chinese officials were allowed to interrogate Chinese asylum seekers in Sydney’s Villawood detention centre.

In the years after 9/11 (and also before), America was kidnapping terror suspects and sending them through extraordinary rendition to authoritarian states where these prisoners would be tortured for information. The latest Guantanamo Bay files confirm that Washington was also asking repressive regimes to assist them in identifying people as well as probably threatening their families back home.

The Wikileaks files detail America’s treatment of Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj who languished without charge for six years in Guantanamo Bay. It can now be confirmed that he was only held in the prison camp because the Bush administration hated the Qatar-based news network and wanted to gain more information about its alleged connection to terrorism. It is a chilling warning to media companies the world over.

The response of the Obama administration to the latest document dump was typically Orwellian. The lawyers representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay were told, even after the mainstream press had widely disseminated the Wikileaks documents, that the files remained legally classified. The New York Times perfectly highlighted the issue:

Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern law professor who represents Abu Zubaydah, the detainee accused of being a terrorist facilitator who was waterboarded by the Central Intelligence Agency, said he could not comment on the newly disclosed assessment of his client, which is posted on The Times Web site.“Everyone else can talk about it,” Mr. Margulies said. “I can’t talk about it.”

Although Wikileaks itself was not a major focus of this release (only briefly, anyway), it again proved the power of the whistle-blowing website. Western news organisations were forced to collaborate with an organisation with a relatively small staff and budget. The obvious question remains; why didn’t The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Guardian receive the scoop with their own investigations?

If former US army soldier Bradley Manning was the leaker of this information – President Obama has already said Manning is guilty, undoubtedly affecting any potential trial – he has given the world an invaluable insight into a superpower’s tyranny; he is a patriot in the truest sense of the word.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.

The world post 9/11 is polluted with “terrorism experts”, usually academics who love to be romanced by armies in the business of brutally killing declared “enemies”.

Rohan Gunaratna is intimate with the thugs in Colombo. In an interview with a Sri Lankan newspaper he offers advice for the government to avoid having to take accountability for the latest UN report on war crimes committed by the Rajapaksa regime and Tamil Tigers during the end of the civil war (though the Wall Street Journal, who never sees a counter-insurgency it doesn’t like, urges critics to focus less on the past and more on the present).

The interviewer is clearly only interested in hearing suggestions how Sri Lanka can ignore international opinion and Gunaratna is happy to oblige, painting a picture of a post-war nation that is simply untrue; Tamils are still treated like second-class citizens:

Q: The UN claims the panel of experts set up to advise Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on accountability issues with respect to the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka has found ‘credible reports of war crimes’ committed by both the Government and Tamil rebels. How valid are these assertions in your opinion?

The Sri Lankan government should respond, not react, to the panel report. This should be viewed as an opportunity for Sri Lanka to tell its side of the story. The UN Panel of Experts never visited Sri Lanka and interviewed the key players. For instance, the Panel should visit the centres rehabilitating former LTTE leaders and cadres, the unprecedented development in the north and the east devastated by 30 years of war, review the documentation on how government provided humanitarian assistance to the LTTE controlled areas, and interview the formation commanders that fought in the last war. The UN panel report is largely based on reporting by human rights, media, and international organizations heavily lobbied by the LTTE as well as front, cover and sympathetic organizations of the LTTE. For instance the Panel quotes from the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), a LTTE front group acknowledged by the international security and intelligence community as a principal provider of funds for LTTE procurement of arms, ammunition and explosives. While the Sri Lankan government lacking in public diplomacy failed to reflect the ground reality of the fight in the terminal phase (October 2008-May 2009), LTTE’s aggressive and selective reporting influenced human rights, media and international organizations.

In Iraq and Afghanistan where over a million civilians have been killed, there is no UN Panel advising the UN Secretary General to investigate war crimes. In May 2009, Sri Lanka was successful in dismantling the LTTE the battlefield but failed to counter the LTTE led misinformation and the disinformation campaign globally. Governments, International organizations and NGOs today react to lobbying and campaigning, a capability Sri Lanka needs to build and operationalize in the coming months and years.  The number one lesson from Sri Lanka for contemporary and future war fighters is that they must win both the battlefield and the information operation campaign.

Q: The UN statement issued on the release states that ‘The Secretary-General sincerely hopes that this advisory report will make a contribution to full accountability and justice so that the Sri Lankan Government and people will be able to proceed towards national reconciliation and peace.’ Given the long term repercussions of the report, how would you recommend the government’s respond to the contents of this report?

In addition to a point by point rebuttal of what is factually inaccurate, the Sri Lankan government should respond to the Panel report in many other ways. The outcome of such a Report signifies a massive failure on the part of the Sri Lankan government especially of the Ministry of External Affairs to respond to a new type of threat.

The Sri Lanka government should produce a White Paper detailing what happened in the terminal phase of the battle and recommendations to ensure that Sri Lanka will remain stable and peaceful. The White Paper should also list what government has done since May 2009 to build reconciliation between the different communities, rehabilitation efforts to give a second life to LTTE leaders and cadres, and the unprecedented development in the north and the east. Sri Lanka must highlight that not a single terrorist incident has occurred in the country since the LTTE was dismantled and all communities in Sri Lanka now live in peace and harmony.

Q: The panel in its recommendations calls for ‘initiating an effective accountability process beginning with genuine investigations’. How far do you believe the government should go in heeding these recommendations?

The Sri Lankan government routinely investigates allegations of atrocities. Whenever there is a credible allegation, it is absolutely essential for the Sri Lankan criminal justice and prisons system to act.  If a soldier or an officer is found guilty, the state has the responsibility to punish that individual. However, there is a distinction between isolated acts of atrocities conducted by individual soldier and systematic war crimes conducted by an army. The UN Panel report alleges that there were war crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan military and by the LTTE. It is apparent that the LTTE had a policy of conducting massacres of border villages, bombings of public places and forced recruitment of children. Even during the IPKF period, the LTTE used hospitals as cover to attack Indian peacekeepers causing high fatalities and casualties among Indian soldiers. In defence, when the IPKF fired back, both LTTE cadres and civilians were killed. As a professional military trained by the US, UK, India and other countries, the Sri Lankan military did not systematically and deliberately kill or injure civilians. In contrast, the LTTE has been notorious for using human shields, human bombs and provoking retaliatory attacks. After penetrating a government declared zone for civilians, the LTTE deliberately hid behind a human wall and attacked causing suffering, injury, and death to both civilians and military personnel. Alleging that Sri Lankan security forces intentionally and wilfully targeted civilians stated by a UN panel of experts need careful study. Similar allegations by UN agencies, NGOs, and other bodies have been levelled against the armies of US, UK, Israel and other standing militaries fighting brutal insurgencies.

Murdoch’s Australian has spent the last months demonising NSW Greens Senator elect Lee Rhiannon. The main reason is her strong and principled support for sanctions against apartheid Israel and her progressive politics.

Today’s paper features a Labor party press release dressed up as a news story. Memo to reporters there; only quoting one political enemy of Rhiannon isn’t news; it’s propaganda:

Claims that NSW senator-elect Lee Rhiannon has been victimised because of her past links to socialism have been rubbished by NSW Labor upper house MP Luke Foley.

Sydney academic Wendy Bacon yesterday compared the public scrutiny of Ms Rhiannon over her support for a boycott of Israel to McCarthyism.

In an article on ABC website The Drum under the headline “The character assassination of Lee Rhiannon”, Professor Bacon said the high-profile Greens member had been subjected to unfair attention because of the political beliefs she and her parents held in the 1960s.

“Her sin: her family’s membership of the Socialist Party of Australia which continued to support the Soviet Union after its 1968 invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia. All of that happened more than 40 years ago,” wrote Professor Bacon, who is director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.

“This attack smacks of McCarthyism.”.

But Mr Foley, who has been vocal in his criticism of Ms Rhiannon’s support for the campaign to boycott Israel, said Professor Bacon’s claims were simply untrue.

He said Ms Rhiannon was rightfully subjected to scrutiny over her support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel, which had nothing to do with her political past.

“My criticisms of Lee Rhiannon are around her activities in the here and now,” Mr Foley said. “I think what is important here is the extremism of the Greens . . . and Lee Rhiannon is the most high-profile supporter in Australian politics of the BDS.”

Here.

Pew shames a Western media that routinely praises the internet for bringing revolutions to Egypt and beyond (thanks to The Angry Arab):

Role of Social Networking: Nearly a quarter of Egyptians (23%) say they have used social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to obtain news about their country’s political situation; 6% access these sites but have not used it as a source of political news. About two-thirds (65%) do not use the internet or email.

I appeared last night on ABCTV News 24′s The Drum alongside ABC journalist Marius Benson and lobbyist Sue Cato (video here).

While China, we learn via Wikileaks, ignores Australia’s supposed concerns for human rights, I asked if Prime Minister Julia Gillard actually cared about human rights as there had been no public comments from her after this week’s Guantanamo Bay files on countless innocent prisoners tortured by the world’s super-power. US crimes are not abuses in the eyes of our political and media elites. The words “human rights” are used as a political weapon as opposed to being something to cherish. Gillard’s current trip to China is solely about trade and military ties. Can the media and politicians be honest about this, please?

We discussed the alleged medical experimentation in Guantanamo Bay and the doctors complicit in the process. Both David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib have accused the US of doing this to them and yet we still don’t take their allegations seriously; how much did the Australian government know?

Finally, the UN report on war crimes in Sri Lanka during the country’s civil war (the massive allegations have unsurprisingly been denied by Colombo). The fact that up to 40,000 innocents may have been murdered by Sri Lanka (and far less by the Tamil Tigers) requires a robust and international trial. I called on Australia and the global community to back a transparent inquiry (a position supported by a Guardian editorial). Like the Goldstone report into Israeli and Hamas crimes, this latest UN investigation warrants the most serious response, despite China, the US, the West and Australia all likely to not show much enthusiasm.

Sadly, Canberra is more concerned about working with Colombo to stop poor Tamils getting onto boats and coming to Australia. So much for our priority ever being human rights accountability.

Really:

Anyone surfing the Internet this week is free to read leaked documents about the prisoners held by the American military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to print them out or e-mail them to friends.

Except, that is, for the lawyers who represent the prisoners.

On Monday, hours after WikiLeaks, The New York Times and other news organizations began publishing the documents online, the Justice Department informed Guantánamo defense lawyers that the documents remained legally classified even after they were made public.

Because the lawyers have security clearances, they are obligated to treat the readily available files “in accordance with all relevant security precautions and safeguards” — handling them, for example, only in secure government facilities, said the notice from the department’s Court Security Office.

God bless the US:

The recent murder in Gaza of Italian human rights activist Vittorio Arrigoni was a shock to all of us. He was killed by a self-proclaimed Salafi jihadi group. The isolation of Gaza almost guarantees some extremism, writes Jared Malsin in Foreign Policy:

Beyond the tragic events of the story itself, however, Arrigoni’s death highlights a complex political context, a web of power relations among various actors in Gaza including Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, the Salafis, other Palestinian factions, and the international community. At the root of these dynamics is the Israeli and Western policy of isolating Gaza and ignoring Hamas. The crippling four-year-long blockade of Gaza has created the conditions of human misery and desperation in which a handful of people have turned to extremism. A new report from International Crisis Group states that the blockade has amounted to “an assist provided to Salafi-Jihadis, who benefit from…Gaza’s lack of exposure to the outside world.”

The UN-led report on the country’s civil war is clear. Death and destruction on a massive scale. Former UN spokesman Gordon Weiss in Colombo says that the UN kept quiet during the last months of the war instead of speaking honestly about what they knew was happening in the north of the country:

ALI MOORE: This report criticises the UN for failing to take action, especially by not publicly talking about casualty figures, which the report and the authors say could have strengthened the call for the protection of civilians. You were the UN spokesman. Why didn’t that happen?

GORDON WEISS: Yeah, well, I was the UN spokesman and I was making statements about numbers, but there was obviously a decision taken not to use the specific figures that we were gathering. I was also part of that particular cell that’s mentioned inside the report who were trying to calculate casualty figures on a daily basis. But there was a decision taken up the chain not to use those figures.

ALI MOORE: Was that a decision you believe that was taken under pressure from the Sri Lankan Government? Was it a calculated decision to ensure the UN could stay in the country?

GORDON WEISS: I think the broader view was that if the UN used those figures it would make the UN’s position in the country untenable, and the UN mission was not a political mission or a peace-keeping mission or an observer mission, it was a humanitarian mission. So you had a lot of humanitarian agencies who were there trying to deliver the basics to those who were caught up in the siege.

ALI MOORE: So was that in essence a judgement that it was better to be there and be silent than not be there at all?

GORDON WEISS: I think it was, yes.

ALI MOORE: Was that right, do you think, in hindsight?

GORDON WEISS: No. I didn’t believe that it was right, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to change that.

ALI MOORE: In your view, though, clearly the UN could have done more?

GORDON WEISS: Yes, but in my view the UN can always do more. I mean, I don’t think the UN is ever in situations where it just gets things right. You know, this was a very, very tough theatre. It was the cutting edge of humanitarian action. It was always going to be tough. So that the UN got something wrong is no surprise; the question really is the degree to which it got it wrong.

The international community now has an obvious decision to make. Take action against Sri Lanka or remain silent, therefore guaranteeing other states will behave similarly (Israel, the US, China etc). The UN report is very clear on what both Colombo and the Tamil Tigers did to civilians. Tragically, in yet another example of UN gutlessness, it appears that directions were given to local staff to remain silent during the war. Shameful:

After the Sri Lanka war crimes report by the UN Panel of Experts was quietly presented to the UN Security Council by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Inner City Press asked Ban two questions about the report.

Among his answers on Sri Lanka, Ban implicitly acknowledged the report’s charge that the UN withheld casualty figures during the conflict.

Asked  to “respond to the criticisms in the report that the UN failed in those last months to do what it could to help protect civilians, including keeping statistics of the actual casualty figures back,” Ban said that the Sri Lankan authorities said that they couldn’t guarantee the safety of UN staff:

“the security situation was very precarious, at the last stage of the crisis. And we were told by the Sri Lankan Government, as I understand and remember, that the Sri Lankan Government would not be able to ensure the safety and security of United Nations missions there. Then we were compelled to take the necessary action according to their advice.”

Damn right:

A 24-country poll found that most people believe WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange is not a criminal and should not be charged by the U.S. government for releasing thousands of secret U.S. documents.

The poll by Ipsos found 79 percent of people were aware of WikiLeaks and two-thirds of those believed Assange should not be charged and three-quarters supported the group’s bid to make public secret government or corporate documents.

U.S. respondents had a far more critical view, with 81 percent aware of WikiLeaks and 69 percent of those believing Assange should be charged and 61 percent opposing WikiLeaks’ mission.

The countries found least likely to support legal action against Assange by the U.S. government were South Africa, Germany, Russia and Argentina, while the highest support was in the United States, South Korea, Britain, India and Indonesia.